Message Of Life

03/04/2004

I had no idea when I started reading, "Waking the Dead" by John Eldredge, just how life changing it would be. I had no idea where it would take me on my spiritual journey, and I had no idea how painful some of those steps along the way would be--painful, but well worth it.

Being that we are now in Tucson, all our dreams and all our desires are becoming a reality. Not that we desire to live in Tucson-some of you may be thinking right off the bat, why would anyone dream that! Why would we "desire" to live out in the deserts of Arizona, especially with the hotter seasons quickly approaching!

This is not our desire, to live here. Our desire is to be where God calls us to be, to travel where He leads, and to be obedient to His call on our lives. Some of us search our whole lives and never really know what the call on our life is. What are we doing on this earth anyway? Why has God placed us here, in this time, with these people, in this set of circumstances?

All good questions--have we found the answers? And if we haven't, where do we go to find those answers? Besides first opening up your Bibles, you might start with a book like, "Waking the Dead." This book has nothing to do with dead people, it has nothing to do with physical death from sickness or disease, but it has everything to do with spiritual death, emotional death from this world's sickness and disease. It has everything to do with the condition of your heart!

What condition is your heart in? Are you feeling oppressed, depressed, run down, out of breath, trapped on the treadmill of life and not really getting anywhere fast? How's your heart holding up? Does it hurt? Is it empty? Are you running low on love for others as well as for yourself? To quote from the book:

Page 211
"Caring for our own hearts isn't selfishness; it's how we begin to love.
Yes, we care for our hearts for the sake of others. Does that sound like a contradiction? Not at all. What will you bring to others if your heart is empty, dried up, pinned down? Love is the point. And you can't love without your heart, and you can't love well unless your heart is well."

Some of us don't even know that our hearts are "sick." That was how I was. I knew my heart had been sick from grief, but I have felt God's great healing in that part of my heart. I knew I was well on the road to recovery when it came to sorrow. What I didn't know was that it was only the beginning of the places God wanted me to take a look at in my own heart. Places where the Enemy has held me prisoner for way too long. Places that I didn't even realize existed, and why they existed, and the lies that shaped and molded my whole life for as far back as I could remember. Places that would keep me from places like "Tucson." Not the physical city of Tucson, but the spiritual journey of Tucson and the path that God has for my life, one that I would miss if I did not invite God into the darkest places of my heart and seek His healing so that true freedom in Christ could be found.

As I read in Acts 5 this morning about the apostles being put in jail, I could relate to what followed:

But an angel of the Lord came at night, opened
the gates of the jail, and brought them out. Then
he told them, "Go to the Temple and give the
people this message of life."
Acts 5:19-20

As I read this this morning, about the message of life, about the angel opening the gates of the jail, I just knew I had to share with you once again about all that God has offered us in this life, if we will only receive His many blessings!

So many of us are being held "prisoner" and we don't even know it! I didn't know it. I didn't know that the Enemy had set me up my entire life to stop me from being right here, right now, doing exactly what God is calling me to do. But God knew it, and God had a better plan, a greater plan, a plan of blessings for my life. God brought me to "Waking the Dead" just in time. He canceled my plans one day last week so I could spend the afternoon with Him. He had me sit and read an author who I believe has been truly gifted by God to shed some light in those dark places that have held us captive for too long.

So I sat, and I read and I learned and I started to invite God into places in me that needed Him desperately. They were locked cells, and I not only wasn't asking for the "key," I didn't even realize they existed. I thought they were just who I was, who I had always been, and who I would have to deal with until my dying day when Jesus would make me truly whole in heaven...wrong! Jesus has made me truly whole on this earth. He came to set us all free from these things, not to be held prisoner by them!

Eldredge writes:
"There is a glory to your life that your Enemy fears, and he is hell-bent on destroying that glory before you act on it."

As Jim and I got closer to acting on God's call in our lives, the Enemy was fearful. He knew the time had come for "war." Spiritual War! He wanted to take me down and fast! God wanted to set me free, and fast! The war was on!

As I followed the steps given in Eldredge's book for allowing God into those places, the battle heated up! Like a room that needs a good cleaning, first you have to dump everything out into the center of it, getting rid of what's not needed, keeping what is. If someone were to walk into the room at that moment, all they would see was a mess. But you would know it was a process that was just taking time. Soon, everything would be put in order, and the end result would be great! In the meantime, it appeared to be "chaos."

Last week was "chaos" for me. If everything in the room was dumped into the center, I was buried underneath it! I felt ready to give up, ready to shut down, and ready to let the weight of the lies I'd been living with my whole life stop me in my tracks. As Eldredge writes, I was "agreeing with the Enemy."

Page 196
"...all our interpretations of our own lives were off. Each of us was in the process of making subtle agreements with the Enemy, and we weren't even aware of it. It was only through the eyes of our friends that we recovered our hearts, our true place, reality.

Now this may be confusing to some of you, it was confusing to me when I first heard it this way. How was I agreeing with the Enemy, what agreements had I made? I didn't understand. It took time, it took opening myself up to God and allowing Him into places that I'd rather not go to find out what this meant.

Now I understand because I have sat with another, I have shared my heart, I have come out from underneath the rubble of battle and where I was once blind, I do see. Put it in plain English, I faced the lies that I had always believed about myself, lies that the Enemy kept telling me about who I really was, and they were replaced by who I am in Christ on this day!

Acts 5:23
The jail was locked, with the guards
standing outside, but when we opened
the gates, no one was there!"

God can free us from whatever has kept us locked up in our hearts! He wants to do that for us, but sometimes we are so blind, we don't even know we are locked up! It is subtle, and we are so used to it, it feels so "normal." Who would we be without those thoughts we have always had? Who would we be if we were truly set free from our past? Truly forgiven as far as the east is from the west? We would be all that God is calling us to be, that's who!!

Stop for a moment and look into another person's eyes, really observing them. Listen to not only to their voice but their heart. What are they saying? Why are they acting that way? Why are they so mean? Why do they say such hurtful things? Why are they so sad? What makes them so hesitant? Why are they in such a hurry? What frustrates them? What is going on behind what we see from the outside? Are they in agreement with the Enemy about who they are? Is the Enemy locking them in that cell causing them to be frustrated or angry or hesitant, perhaps fearful? Is that who they really are or are they just falling for the lies and agreeing with them?

I have sat with women who are the most wonderful woman you could ever want to meet. I did not understand why they did not see themselves that way. I saw it! It seemed so clear to me, they were awesome women...what lies were they believing about themselves that the Enemy was telling them?

Why do some people turn to crime, prostitution, murder, or simply anger? Is this who they think they really are, so they might as well just go along with the lies they are being told on the inside?

Why do some people become perfectionist or workaholics or allow people to hurt them or to walk all over them? Are they running away from the lies that the Enemy tells them like they are lazy, or no good or not worthy of being treated kindly?

The heart is more than an organ that pumps blood through our body. It is where so many other things are stored and it where our greatest hurts and our greatest joys are felt. It is where we can remain captive, or where we can be truly set free with the Promises of God.

My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs;
an evil gang closes in on me.
They have pierced my hands and feet.
I can count every bone in my body.
My enemies stare at me and gloat.
They divide my clothes among themselves
and throw dice for my garments.
Psalm 22:16-18

We are not alone in this battle. It is what Jesus died for! He went to the Cross so we could be set free. As I sat and watched "The Passion of the Christ," I was again being taught in full view on the big screen what Jesus did for all of us. He was surrounded by enemies, He was beaten beyond recognition, He was in an agony that there are no words for, and all the way along, Satan was there watching, waiting, hoping that Jesus would call an end to His suffering. He did not! He endured it all for us! Why? So we could be forgiven of our sins and live in eternity with Him? Of course! But even more than that! He wanted us to be set free while we still live here on this earth! First and foremost, so we can serve Him with our whole and well heart because Jesus knows that is where our true joy will be found!

How do we do that? First we have to recognize the Enemy for what He is...a liar, a cheat a thief and a murderer! If we don't recognize our Enemy, how will we know what we are even fighting against? If we don't stop long enough to look him square in the eye, face our fears, our past, our hurts, we will just continue to stuff them down into those places in our hearts that are growing fuller by the day as we continue on our way, because hey, we are busy, we don't have time for that nonsense!

Guess who loses! We do!
Guess who wins! The Enemy does!
Guess whom Jesus died for?
Us, and we are refusing the greatest gift ever offered in human history!!

My heart has heard you say, "Come and talk with me."
And my heart responds, "Lord, I am coming."
Psalm 27:8

God has called Jim and me on the road to serve Him, and we love it! This is our heart's desire, our dreams fulfilled-to be on the road full-time seeing where God leads us. It has simplified our lives and allows me to write as I feel called to at this time in my life. It has allowed Jim to work a job that keeps us moving and seeing all the interesting things along the way. It looks like we will be visiting a missile silo in this area on the weekend...it's a guy thing!

But where would we be if my heart heard God saying, "Come and talk with me," and I responded, "Not now Lord, I'm busy, I don't want to go there with you, it might be a bit uncomfortable so I'd rather that things just stay status-quo."

Would our lives be horrible? Probably not! We could keep busy and happy and keep stuffing down anything that tried to rear up and cause us to take a closer look at the Enemy's lies about us. We could keep it under raps and live like that, in the prison of who the Enemy wants us to think we are, or--we can live fully.

In Eldredges book he quotes Saint Irenaeus:
"The glory of God is man fully alive."

How many of us are living our lives fully alive, giving God the glory? Not many! And not many of us know that we are not! Parts of our hearts are living in cells that are dark and dreary not realizing that those dim recesses of our hearts and minds could be in "Cancun" on the white sandy beach, enjoying a wonderful vacation in God's bright sunshine!

Why do we not realize this? Because we have always lived in a slum, always slept in the gutter, always eaten from the garbage bin and we don't know anything different. We think this is normal and that life doesn't hold anything better for us. We are "agreeing with the Enemy" that this is what we deserve, that this is who we are and what we will always be, and there's no use in trying to change anything.

But, change is possible!! With God all things are possible!

The Lord is my strength, my shield from every danger.
I trust in him with all my heart.
He helps me, and my heart is filled with joy.
I burst out in songs of thanksgiving.
Psalm 28:7

I sat under the rubble of the war going on last week. I felt the Enemy fighting for the places in my heart that he has always controlled. He did not want to give up this battle ground now because he knew I would be one step closer to being fully alive. One step closer to living the life God has for me. He did not want God "Waking the Dead" in me, healing a heart that starts to get damaged the day we take our first breath in this fallen world. The battle raged and it was difficult, I cried, my sister prayed and then I went that night and sat quietly during a three-hour prayer session at a friend's house. I was weary from the struggle; I needed the love of God to wash over me. It did.

The Lord rules over the floodwaters.
The Lord reigns as king forever.
The Lord gives his people strength.
The Lord blesses them with peace.
Psalm 29:10-11

The Enemy had set me up my entire life to stop me from what God is calling me to do right here, right now. I wasn't aware of that, I thought it was just how I was, how I would always be. I was agreeing with him...but no more!

We must obey God rather than human authority.
Acts 5:29

Whether that be my authority, or anyone else's, or even the Enemy's...God must be obeyed first and foremost! Then we will live this life fully alive. God wants no less for any of us! He sent His Son to die so that we might live!!

"What will you bring to others if your heart is empty, dried up, pinned down? Love is the point. And you can't love without your heart, and you can't love well unless your heart is well." (Eldredge)

We are called to love the Lord our God and to love others as we love ourselves. That is the desire of my heart, the dreams I long to see fulfilled--to share the Good News and the healing and the true hope that is found in Jesus Christ. I can't do that. None of us can do that, if we don't have the "heart" for it! That is why the Enemy seeks to kill, steal and destroy our hearts. If he can do that, what do we have to offer anyone? If we don't accept God's "offer" for our own lives, for our own hearts, how can we offer it to anyone else by the life we live?

In God's perfect timing and in God's perfect way, He brought me to this book before He sent us off once again on the journey He is calling us to fulfill for Him. This e-mail is not a book review, but instead a lesson shared about the heart, my heart, and possibly something that your hearts may be in need of also.

"Go to the Temple and give the
people this message of life."
Acts 5:20

Jesus is life!
The Enemy is death!
I choose life!!

Thanks for listening,

Diane